Thursday, March 13, 2008

Resetting the Bucks

A couple of posts ago I did an "Offense/Defense" assessment of the Bucks. There was a lot of great comments on it. Well, truth is, it was slightly inaccurate for the reason I gave in "Sidebar II" of my last post.

In a nutshell, the positional averages I originally used were stale... which I discovered as I tried to apply the "formula" to players from other teams. In short, the averages needed updating or they wouldn't accurately reflect the "defense" that each player was providing. So I went through the hell of computing all the "Production by Position" numbers for every team on 82games.com to produce averages that are exactly reflective of the average Win Score production at each position this season.

Note: I also added each Buck's "Cost per Win" to my new chart. Bogut is our best bargain. If I listed some of the Bucks as costing more per win than they actually make, its because they have produced less than one win, so I theorized how much it would cost the Bucks if they had to pay them for a full win. In other words, if you bought a half a hot dog from me and I charged you $2.00, you could tell people that I was charging $4.00 per hot dog.

The New Numbers in a nutshell

Basically the new Bucks numbers are just internal readjustments of the old numbers for each player. As you can see from the old and new averages, C production is way up, PF production is down, and every other position is up slightly. So, Bogut's defense was much better than I originally had it, and Yi's... while still above average... isn't quite as sterling as I first made it seem.

Actually, Bogut's defense... if you accept my measurement as being an accurate reflection of defense... is far superior to so-called "defensive type" centers such as Tyson Chandler and Marcus Camby. What might be happening is that those two tend to wander on defense to block shots. You might argue that they are therefore helping hold down their teammates "Defensive Win Scores" at the expense of their own. That may be true, but if 82games "Counterpart" production information is accurate, they are also allowing their men to do more damage than Bogut allows his men to do to the Bucks.

And I feel good about that. I'd rather know we have a solid "on-the-ball" defensive center, because we can put pieces around him. We don't necessarily need "The New Bill Russell" to be successful. The important thing now is getting those pieces right.

Coming Soon: A post on the cruel injustice of leaving Marques Johnson off the Milwaukee Bucks 40th Anniversary Team. I can't believe that! He's easily the second most productive Buck. Why no love for #6? Was it the coke? Because a certain famous third baseman from year's gone by is legendary for indulging in the snow, and he's in the Brewer Hall of Fame. And he left Milwaukee; Marques J was traded!

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